Last week, I decided to investigate the top ten most popular stories of 2011, based upon the preferences of the readers of the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, using statistics made available through Google Analytics. No real patterns emerged. Several of the favorites were about Virginia politics, others were interviews with national celebrities; the number one story was about a movie. All of them were published during the calendar year 2011 and none were carryovers from 2010.

Apparently adult content no longer has the cachet on the Internet that it once had. Not so long ago, using words like "porn," "erotica," "panties," or "scrotum" would be a surefire path to search engine optimization (SEO). Paraphrasing a Supreme Court decision and replacing "penumbra" with "aureola" was pure traffic-enhancing gold. But, it seems, no more.

For reasons of space, I ended up publishing three "Year in Review" articles on Examiner.com, dividing the top ten into groups of three, four, and three.

What follows is just the list of the ten most popular Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner articles of 2011. To see the annotations, please visit the original year in review pieces published on December 16, December 17, and December 18.